klute (spine 987)

Klute
Directed by: Alan J. Pakula
1971
Spine #987

Klute, released in 1971 and directed by Alan J. Pakula, reflects a certain determination - seen throughout the decade - to marry the psychological dimensions of a gritty character study with a thriller’s lurid grip. It’s not hard to see the appeal. Splicing together the DNA of Sidney Lumet and Brian De Palma has the potential for cinematic Xanadu, but equilibrium is exceptionally tricky to achieve - one half invariably overwhelms the other. And such is the case with Klute, which proves a genuinely outstanding character study… and a rather mediocre thriller.

It’s hard to imagine beginning an analysis of the film anywhere other than with Jane Fonda, who won a well-deserved Oscar for playing New York call girl Bree Daniels. She is, to put it plainly, absolutely tremendous. Like… pantheon-level great. Her performance helped usher in a newfound emphasis on frank realism and interior dimension, and over fifty years later it still carries a revelatory power (Fonda spent a week in the company of real-life prostitutes during pre-production, which simply convinced her that she was all wrong for the role). Bree isn’t the proverbial hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold, nor is she a tragic figure or an object of pity - there’s a matter-of-factness to her portrayal that’s initially disarming… but Fonda offers so many different shades to the character - defiance, edginess, vibrancy, bitterness. This is, unquestionably, one of the great, multifaceted performances of 70s cinema, and reason alone to make a specific point of checking out the movie post-haste. 

Bree is an aspiring actress, and she has talent - just not enough to rise above the noise (early on we see her at a casting call for a cosmetics ad, in which the girls are brusquely dismissed for a variety of Seinfeldian reasons - Bree’s hands are deemed “weird-looking”). Instead, her abilities are put to use while turning tricks, such as when we see her put a john at ease with a seductive purr that’s utterly hypnotic. But that cool air of self-possession cracks in an astonishing series of scenes with Bree’s therapist - supposedly all but completely improvised by Fonda - which take on the air of stark confessionals delivered directly to the audience.

I feel this time, that’s what’s different. I mean, I feel, my body feels, I enjoy, uh… making love with him. Which, uh… is a very baffling and bewildering thing for me, because I’ve never felt that before. I just wish I could let things happen and, uh, enjoy it, you know, for what it is and while it lasts and, uh… relax about it. But ALL THE TIME, all the time, I keep feeling the need to destroy it, to break it off, to go back to the comfort of being numb again.

So far this doesn’t sound like much of a thriller. Enter John Klute (Donald Sutherland), a detective whose best friend, Tom Gruneman, came to the Big Apple on business six months ago and never returned. It’s assumed he’s on the lam, or met some seedy demise (as one tends to do when venturing into the big, bad city), but Klute remains unconvinced - even after the authorities uncover an obscene letter Gruneman supposedly wrote to Bree, which constitutes his primary lead (the film teases the idea of New York City as a corrupting influence - a place where a morally upright family man can indulge his dark side and allow it to take root).

Pakula, who made paranoia his stock-and-trade in the 70s (he’d go on to direct The Parallax View and All the President’s Men), and DP Gordon Willis generate a thick, at times palpable atmosphere of dread, accentuated by Michael Small’s unsettling score. But what they achieve is mostly a tonal baseline, an overarching sense of mood… rarely tethered to actual suspense or narrative propulsion. The few scenes that actually adhere to the tenets of the thriller genre are staged with no particular panache (or even logic). The mystery surrounding Gruneman’s fate is paper-thin and more or less tipped well in advance of the denouement. These plot elements feel like a commercial garnish; it's almost like the complete inverse of a giallo picture, in which psychological nuance is typically sacrificed in the name of salacious sensation.  ​

If you’re wondering why on earth the film is called Klute, the character was initially written as the protagonist - an incorruptible outsider who arrives, like a Western hero, in an urban sprawl of sin to set things right. It was Pakula, working in tandem with Fonda, who recognized how much more textured and compelling the story would be if it were tilted in Bree’s direction instead. With that in mind, he could hardly have picked a better leading man than Sutherland, whose self-effacing performance is all quiet constraint and observation. It’s a generously deferential turn, so internalized that Klute’s facial expression rarely even changes (sadly, it’s also a reminder why Sutherland - inexplicably - has never even received an Oscar nomination, let alone won; this sort of disciplined and understated work is far too easy to overlook). In the end, neither Klute nor New York City rub off on the other in any notable way; it’s Bree, caught between the two, whose fate is left up in the air. And the fact she’s unlikely to ever be fulfilled by either is the great tragedy of the character - and, by extension, the film itself.